It's every concept car you've ever seen

While bits of classic Disco styling remain (raked body-color C-pillar, wavy-shape tailgate), Land Rover says the Vision is a "window into the future" for a "new Discovery family." This profile is definitely fresh, sleek, and clean, albeit with more of a crossover vibe. A Range Rover-inspired nose job is on tap, using new LED laser headlights for nearly 900 feet of illumination.

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Cockpit? Also typical concept-car fare, with a litany of touchscreens and hideaway equipment. Rear seating is a 2+3+2 arrangement but is able to both fold down and slide, allowing any configuration between four and seven passengers. Oh, and the tailgate can deploy an "event platform" with an aft-facing bench. You know, for events.

Because spaceship

At the Discovery Vision debut, Land Rover also announced its partnership with Virgin Galactic's commercial space flight program. Why? Well, to start with, the Disco Vision's panoramic roof, windshield, hatch, and windows are made up of 'Smart Glass,' which can adjust transparency or project images like, say, an external back-up camera for parking. Steering wheel stalks are swapped for touchpads, and each passenger has their own 10-inch infotainment setup. The kicker? All of this is controlled with hand gestures. Yes, like in Minority Report.

It's also a remote control car

Using a linked tablet or smartphone, the Discovery Vision can be operated at low speeds while the driver is outside of the car. Kind of a cool idea for lining up a trailer, though if you can't manage hitching a boat to your SUV, you probably shouldn't be towing it. Or driving it.

So what's our takeaway?

It looks like the Discovery is moving upmarket a bit from its rugged, oddball roots into a techy SUV with crossover appeal, primed to spawn a few sub-models. We'd recommend not getting too attached to those swipe-activated blinkers, but expect both the LR2 and LR4's replacements to look very similar to this Vision concept (with or without an invisible hood).

The former should arrive before this year's end, and the latter will follow the next Defender in 2016.